I'm baaaaaaaack!!!!!!

Haven't updated this blog in a long time, but thought I'd start updating it again since my "learning curves" have been spiraling upwards lately. Lately I've been teaching an online class for the faculty in our system (called iTeach Essentials) and teaching it has been a wonderful--though sometimes harrowing--experience.

This course was a long time in development. As the training manager for our system, obviously having a fully-online course in online teaching for faculty who wish to teach online was a major addition to my current arsenal of training tools. However, the development of the class has been very collaborative, and has had the input of quite a number of people. (That's a whole story in and of itself).

The thing I am really enjoying about the experience of teaching this course is the fact that the faculty who are participating are really actively engaged in the process. It's putting them into the interesting position of wondering, as one of them recently wrote on a discussion board, "Am I a student or am I a teacher?!". Tough question, because in this course they're actually functioning as students, and I think that for many of the participants, being in that role--of having to actually read content or watch videos, submit to discussions and complete and submit technical assignments within certain deadlines--has given them a completely new perspective on what it means to be a student in an online setting.

The two most common posts to our discussion boards so far are, "Oh my G-d---I sound just like one of my students!!!!!" and "Gee, I've been doing this all along, but I never knew what it was called!" (this when discussing pedagogical concepts such as chunking, scaffolding, etc.)

One thing that makes me truly happy about being able to make this new resource available to our faculty is that I think that it will truly make those who successfully complete the course into much better online instructors, and this will ultimately yield a more positive and successful learning outcome for the students in our system. The trick now will be to train enough other people to teach the class so that it can be made more widely available throughout our colleges!